TRUTH DECAYExploring New Ideas for Countering Disinformation
The rise of social media has connected people to one another and to information more rapidly and directly than ever before, but this fast-moving digital information landscape has also turbocharged the spread of misinformation and disinformation. From COVID-19 to climate change, coordinated social media efforts to disseminate intentionally false or misleading information are sowing distrust in science and in public institutions, and causing real harms to individuals and society more broadly.
The rise of social media has connected people to one another and to information more rapidly and directly than ever before, but this fast-moving digital information landscape has also turbocharged the spread of misinformation and disinformation. From COVID-19 to climate change, coordinated social media efforts to disseminate intentionally false or misleading information are sowing distrust in science and in public institutions, and causing real harms to individuals and society more broadly.
To help tackle these issues, an upcoming National Academies workshop will bring together a wide range of participants to explore actionable technological, legal, educational, and social science solutions to identify and counter disinformation on social media. The April 10-11 workshop will investigate promising ideas that the workshop planning committee selected from among more than 100 submissions received as part of a competitive submission process. Materials describing selected solutions are available here.
The interactive workshop will feature panel discussions on content moderation, educational interventions, technical interventions, and regulatory and other measures designed to inspire changes in behavior among social media users.
“Given the complexity and magnitude of the disinformation we see being disseminated today, a whole-of-society effort is needed to make sure that we’re able to recognize falsehoods and have access to the evidence-based information we need to make informed decisions,” said Joan Donovan, founder of the nonprofit Critical Internet Studies Institute, assistant professor at Boston University’s College of Communication, and a co-chair of the committee that planned the workshop. “Our workshop will bring together representatives from academia, government, the private sector, and civil society to explore ideas and issues together.”
“We are looking forward to an inventive discussion about new ideas to counter disinformation, what problems they raise and how these might be solved, and what research should be initiated and other resources developed to advance these and other solutions,” said Saul Perlmutter, workshop planning committee co-chair, Nobel laureate in physics, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Of course, the big goal is a healthier digital public conversation, where a wide range of different views can be deliberated with some confidence that they are not based on intentional fabrications.”
Speakers will include:
Amelia Burke-Garcia, director of digital strategy and outreach for public health, NORC at the University of Chicago
Andrew Jenks, chair, Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, and director of media provenance and principal lead project manager, Azure Media Security at Microsoft
Jeff Kosseff, cybersecurity law professor, U.S. Naval Academy
Jonathan Corpus Ong, associate professor of global digital media, Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Nathalie Smuha, legal scholar and philosopher, KU Leuven Faculty of Law
Matt Verich, co-founder and CEO, The Disinformation Project
The virtual workshop will take place April 10 and 11, beginning at noon EDT each day. For more information or to register to attend, please visit the event webpage.
Molly Galvin is Director, Executive Communications, at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The article was originally posted to the website of the National Academies.
